“She’d say… if they really said all of that, then they aren’t worth anything and they don’t deserve me,” Kenzie said. “Maybe.”

“True,” Tristan commented.

“Except,” Kenzie said, making her voice a hush like she was telling us a secret, “They are worth something. They’re cool and I miss them. But I couldn’t tell Ashley that sort of thing.”

The issue with loving everyone you meet and seeing their best sides is that when there’s fault in the relationship she thinks it’s all hers.

“They can be cool and still make a mistake,” I said. “And I think if you asked them, they’d say you’re cool but you made a mistake by reading what they said in private.”

Kenzie smiled, cringing a bit.

“The best way forward is to arrange a meeting. We could arrange for you to talk to them, you clear the air, you apologize, they do the same. Then everyone tries to do better.”

“I can’t fix all the problems they say they had with me.”

“That’s a cop-out,” Sveta said. “You can’t fix all of them, no. But you can fix some and work on others. You pledge to do that as part of your apology.”

Kenzie sighed.

“Yeah?” Sveta pressed her.

“Yeah,” Kenzie admitted.

“I’ll call Tattletale later, then. We’ll work something out.”

Kenzie sighed.

At the other table, the Shepherds were packing up. Scribe was doing a lot of the talking, and the three others were listening. She drew something on the head of her staff, then let go of it, letting it float down and flip over, until it was horizontal. She stood on it, a witch with her broomstick, and used her telekinesis to manipulate it and help keep her balance. The entire time, she was speaking in a voice that was more quiet and for her group only than anything we’d said at our table. Not that we’d broadcast it, but…

Fuck, I was being unfair, wasn’t I?

“We should go check on Rain,” I said. “I have a hard time believing he’s been talking about Love Lost for this long. We done? Do you want to grab something to go, Sveta?”

“No, I ate,” she said.

We packed up our trays and gathered the cutlery into one glass. I gave Scribe a glance over my shoulder, and saw her staring.

She rolled her eyes, her expression just shy of being a sneer, pure disdain in every account. That done, she floated away, still surfing on her magic stick. Her trio walked behind her.

Maybe I wasn’t being unfair. Fuck, I really didn’t like her.

“You were with Weld,” I noted.

“I wasn’t really,” Sveta said. “He was there, but I was with Armstrong. Filling him in on Ashley, asking questions. Just, uh, Weld was there for part of it, and so was Slician. As a friend, Weld said.”